![]() ![]() It is perhaps ironic that a 20 year old game should so starkly display 2 very current issues in gender politics: gender stereotyping and the gender pay gap. Simulating hospitals and gender inequality ![]() It showed that men got paid outrageous amounts of money, whilst receptionists in the game - who were always women - never asked for a pay rise. This game, in 1998, was teaching kids about the gender pay gap. They are never paid as much as the men because they are denied access to a profession that might pay them more. Women can’t be doctors in Theme Hospital. He’s the most qualified doctor in the hospital. I needed his skills as a surgeon, so I had to allow him to be paid more than all of my nursing and receptionist staff put together! In my brief session this very morning, a consultant surgeon, already on the highest salary in the hospital - a princely $246 a month - requested a pay rise of $492. The pay gap is different for every game you play, but it’s always there. This is the gender pay gap in action, in a 1998 video game. And just like in real life, men are more likely to ask for bigger pay rises and start from a higher base. Not only do you have to hire more people to make your hospital run effectively, but you also need to retain them - before they all apparently run off to be game developers for better money.ĭoctors, nurses and caretakers all demand wage increases as their skills increase or their environment worsens: just like in real life. Lessons in gender pay gapsĪ little way into Theme Hospital and the game mechanics slowly get more complex. Having said that, even today there isn’t gender parity in the medical profession - with doctors still being predominantly men 2 - so who knows? Maybe it had a bigger impact than we will ever realise. Theme Hospital taught millennials, growing up in the age of mass-consumer technology, that doctors are men and nurses are women.ĭespite its success, Theme Hospital probably didn’t shape anyone’s entire perception of ‘boys jobs’ and ‘girls jobs’ in the medical profession. Suddenly the choice of gender looks remarkably like a deliberate stereotyping rather than a technical constraint. The caretakers, similarly to the receptionists, are always the same homogenous, older men. There’s ethnic and age diversity amongst the nurses too, but they are only ever of one gender. When you get a little further into the first level, you start hiring nurses and caretakers. Even the ‘assistant’ - who is a man - is clearly a doctor. They’re young and old, black and white, and beardy, hairy or bald. ![]() The doctors have lots of character sprites. But then I noticed the doctors: all the doctors in Theme Hospital are men. The only voiceovers in the game are women too. This a game from 1997 maybe there just wasn’t enough disk space to be able to create alternate receptionist character sprites. Now you might be thinking what I thought. It is not possible to hire a receptionist that is a man. The gender stereotyping starts at step 2 of that process, where the only receptionists you can hire are women. The tutorial for Theme Hospital is brief, and there are only 4 steps to it: I recently started playing it again, prompted by news that the original game’s developers were reviving the classic.Īs I sat building rooms, curing cases of “Bloaty Head”, and hiring staff, I noticed something: Theme Hospital isn’t just a hospital management simulator. After two decades, the game still has a special place in the hearts of many. Twenty year’s ago this month, Theme Hospital was released in Europe on the PlayStation 1.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |